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Davis, Lincoln, and the Kaiser 

Some Comparisons Compared 

(National and International Ethics, 1 86 1 and 1914) 



BY LLOYD T. EVERETT 




YEXID PUBLISHING COMPANY 

BOX 250, BALLSTON, VA. 

1917 



Illllllllllllllllllllillllllllliillllllllllllllllllllllllllillllllli^ 

Davis, Lincoln, and the Kaiser 

Some Comparisons Compared 



(National and International Ethics, 1861 and 19141 



BY LLOYD T. EVERETT 



YEXID PUBLISHING COMPANY 

BOX 250. BALLSTON, VA. ' 

1917 



lilllllllllllllllllllilllllllllllllilllllillilllllllllllillllllli^ 






Davis, Lincoln, and the Kaiser: 

Some Comparisons Compared. 

V.\ LLOVD T. EVERETT. 

(Copyright. lyi7. l)y the author. ) 

Following are some extracts from "zAbraham Lincoln and 
the Issues of the World War," an article in the Saturday 
Evening Post of May 5, 1917, written by Mr. George Whar- 
ton Pepper, a prominent lawyer of the North (reproduced 
here in numbered paragraphs for convenience ; italics ad- 
justed for the purposes of the present article) : 

1. "In the Gettysburg speech Lincoln expressed our idea 
of popular government in words that may become immortal. 
Every school child can now speak glibly about 'government 
of the people, by the people, and for the people.' Possibly 
the words are so familiar that we forget to consider their 
meaning." In a free, popular government the people "have 
grown into an association for the establishment of justice, 
for the securing of common rights, and for the promotion 
of general welfare. * * * \11 powers not granted [to the 
people's "servants," "the legislators and the executive"] be- 
long to the people." 

2. "Lincoln regarded the Civil War as a test. It was, in 
his opinion, to determine not merely whether this nation, but 
whether any nation similarly conceived, could long endure. 
The contending parties, indeed, were both true Americans." 
This "was because the real issue in the Civil War was 
whether a government of associated individuals is strong 
enough to hold together in an internal crisis. If a popular 
government formed under such favorable conditions, as i^; 
could not survive an acute internal difference of opinion Ik- 
tween two groups of citizens, then democracy as a perma- 
nent form of government was doomed. Lincoln was right. 
The very conception of government by the people was on 
trial." 

3. "At the bottom of the long-standing trouble between 
Austria and Serbia were the .Austrian determination to force 

. • ©aA503987 



the imperial idea of government upon Serbia and the Serbian 
determination to resist it. No God-fearing man will justify 
the murder of the Austrian archduke. Neither will he ap- 
prove the terrible international crime which Austria there- 
upon committed, pleading the assassination as an excuse. 
Austria's famous ultimatum to Serbia bore all the earmarks 
of a sham proposal. * * * Serbia's reply was pacific in the 
extreme. All the demands were conceded except the impossi- 
ble two, and even as to these there was a qualified acceptance, 
coupled with an offer to refer the matter either to the Hague 
Tribunal or to the Great Powers. * * * No fair-minded 
man can read the diplomatic record without concluding that 
the Kaiser's government deliberately and successfully blocked 
England's earnest effort at conciliation and did so in order 
that the Austrian Emperor might impose on Serbia the 
shackles of government from the top." 

4. "An Awful Responsibility." — After certain conciliatory 
steps by both Austria and Russia, "peace prospects for a 
moment seemed bright. But the German Kaiser addressed 
to Russia a peremptory demand to stop the mobilization at 
once, though only by means of it had Austria been induced 
to pause in her insane course. The Czar's reply was con- 
ciliatory; the Kaiser's rejoinder was fiery and insolent. Rus- 
sia failing to halt at the point of the pistol, Germany im- 
mediately declared war, first on Russia and then on Russia's 
ally, France. * * * The triumph of Russia and her allies 
in the war will be a notable triumph for government by the 
people. * =!< * If the State is conceived of as the founda- 
tion of rights and its interests are regarded as paramount to 
those of the subject, it is only a short step to the conclusion 
that the State is not bound by the moral principles which are 
binding upon individuals. If there were a definite moral code 

, for nations, the coexistence of two standards of conduct 
would be at least perplexing. But as there is, in fact, only 
one standard in the world, the refusal of a government to 
conform to that one standard makes of the nation an outlaw.'' 

5. "The point to which such a State will go in violating 
moral principles may depend entirely upon what the ruler 
regards as the State's self-interest. What that self-interest 
is conceived at any time to be depends in turn upon the pre- 
vailing view of national destiny. * * * We know to-day 
what infinite suffering has resulted from the Kaiser's viola- 

I* [ 3 ] 



tion of Belgian neutrality. We realize how utterly impos- 
sible it will always be for Germany to make adequate amends 
for unspeakable loss. As one tragic event has succeeded 
another — rape following robbery and murder giving place to 
the torture of slavery — the words of the German Chancellor 
have burned themselves deeper and deeper into the con- 
sciousness of the rest of the world. 'We are now in a state 
of necessity,' said he ; and he might have added : 'And our 
necessitous condition is the direct result of our own wrong.' 
What he actually proclaimed to the Reichstag was far dif- 
ferent. 'Necessity,' he whined, 'knows no law.' " 

6. "International law would have been violated by the in- 
vasion of neutral Belgium even if there had been no express 
guaranty by treaty that Germany would respect that neu- 
trality. But there was such a treaty ; so that the invasion 
violated also the obligation of a most. solemn contract. * * * 
There was, therefore, no possible excuse for what was done 
except the self-interest of the German State." 

7. "The issue must not be obscured by insisting that in the 
course of the war cruelties have been practiced by other na- 
tions as well. It is inevitable that this should be so. But the 
things that individuals or nations do under provocation and 
in violation of their own standards are not to be compared 
with the outworkings of an immoral system in which these 
things have an avowed and legitimate place. Such is the 
issue between government from the top and government by 
the people." The people of Germany "have been trained in 
the most insidious ways to think of themselves more highly 
than they ought to think and to conceive of national self- 
interest as of more concern than the moral law." 

In the great world war "America is privileged to spend 
her blood and her might for the principles which gave her 
birth and happiness and the peace she has treasured. God 
helping her, she can do no other." 

Mr. Pepper's argument is, in brief, first, that in the war 
of 1861 the very conception of government by the people was 
on trial and would have gone to everlasting smash if the Con- 
federacy had succeeded in maintaining its independence, and 
this notwithstanding that both of the contending parties 
"were true Americans" (how this could be is not so clear) ; 
second, tliat nations, more particularly as concerns the great 

[4] 



war of 1914, are bound by the same moral coile which gov- 
erns individuals. 

It seems unfortunate at this time of common endeavor by 
South and North in the war with Germany that such an ar- 
ticle should be written virtually identifying Lincoln's gov- 
ernment of i86r with the allies of 1914 as the army of liberty 
and by the same token equally identifying the Confederate 
States with Germany and her allies as the foes of that 
liberty. But such an article has been written and published 
widely. So let us now proceed critically to examine the 
thesis it embodies. Let us paraphrase the above extracts so 
as to apply throughout to the facts and conditions of the 
war of 1861 and see how the logical application of Mr. Pep- 
per's second contention affects the soundness of his first. 

1. Every school child, adopting Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, 
can now speak glibly of "government of the people, by the 
people, and for the people." But the true meaning of this 
phrase is not so easily grasped and retained, especially as 
applied to a "confederated republic," as Washington termed 
the United States under the Constitution of i/Sg. (i) 
These several States — /. c. the people or peoples constituting 
them — after separate origins and long-continued careers as 
separate colonies and commonwealths, grew into an associa- 
tion, confederation, or league in order, as expressed in the 
preamble, "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, 
insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, 
promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of 
liberty" to the people of that generation and to their "pos- 
terity." 

All powers not granted to the newly formed central gov- 
ernment, the creation, agent, and servant of these several 
States or peoples, necessarily belonged to these several free, 
creating States ; were, moreover, expressly reserved by the 
tenth amendment to the Federal Constitution "to the States 
respectively, or to the people" — i. e., to the States respective- 
ly or to the people thereof, as must needs be from the his- 
torical nature of the case and as appears from the pertinent 
documents and debates of those times and as is declared by 
the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Mur- 
phy vs. Ramsey (114 "United States Reports," 44^ 

2. The crisis of 1861 was a test. It was to determine 
whether institutional liberty was to be allowed peaceably to 

[ 5 ] 



proceed in the way pointed out in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, where it is declared that governments derive "their 
just powers from the consent of the governed" and that 
whenever any form of government becomes destructive of 
its true end of securing the rights of life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness "it is the right of the people to alter or 
to abolish it and to institute a new government" — to proceed 
under these sublime principles of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, as supplemented by the written, contractual guaran- 
ties of the Constitution of 1789, or whether the North would 
follow the example of George III. and by force of arms 
attempt to deny these "unalienable rights" to the peoples of 
the Southern States. 

Stated in somewhat different words, the real issue of the 
war of 1861 was whether a government of associated States 
was strong enough in self-control on the part of a sec- 
tionalist majority then for the momeiit in power to abide by 
the principles of 1776 and by the written conditions and 
guaranties of the constitutional compact and to let the ag- 
grieved minorit}' of the States separate in peace, like Abra- 
ham from Lot of old, when they could no longer dwell to- 
gether in amity. If so, a great step forward, proclaimed in 
1776 and reaffirmed in 1789, would be vindicated; if not, we 
would be back on pre-Revolutionary ground, when only 
bloody revolution was looked to as the means of redress for 
an oppressed people. The very conception of true, pro- 
gressive, peace-loving democracy was on trial. 

3. At the bottom of the long-standing trouble between the 
Northern and the Southern groups of States were the North's 
determination to force upon the South sectionalistic legis- 
lation (centering about a so-called "protective" tariff and the 
exclusion of the negro, slaz'e or free (2), from the new West- 
ern territories) and the South's determination to resist it. 
No God-fearing man will justify the cold-blooded assassina- 
tion of Lincoln ; neither should he approve the hostile and 
ruthless course toward the South which served as the excuse 
for the murder, a deliberate course of invasion, devastation, 
and conquest waged upon the Southern peoples despite their 
pleas for peace, a course which invited the penalty pronounced 
in the Bible (Matthew x.xvi. 52) against those who take the 
sword. 

The Washington government's negotiations with the Con- 
[6] 



federate commissioners preceding the bombardment of Fort 
Sumter bore all the earmarks of trickery. "The crooked 
paths of diplomacy,"' wrote President Davis to Congress (3), 
"can scarcely furnish an example so wanting in courtes}', 
in candor, and in directness as was the course of the United 
States government toward our commissioners in Washing- 
ton." (See the facts discussed at length, with verbatim com- 
munications to and from Secretary Seward, "Messages and 
Papers of the Confederacy," Volume I., pages 82-98; also 
"Official Records of the War," Series 4, Volume I., pages 256 
et seq., and Series i, Volume LIII., pages 161-164, and A. H. 
Stephens's "History of the United States," pages 607-609, and 
Appendix N.) 

The Southern Confederacy's position was pacific in the ex- 
treme. "We protest solemnly in the face of mankind," Mr. 
Davis wrote in his message of April 29, 1861, to Congress (4), 
"tliat we desire peace at an}- sacrifice save that of honor 
and independence. We seek no conquest, no aggrandize- 
ment, no concession of any kind from the States with which 
we were lately confederated ; all we ask is to be let alone; that 
those who never held power over us shall not now attempt 
our subjugation by arms." In the winter of 1860-61 South- 
ern leaders in the Congress of the United States, Mr. Davis 
•and Mr. Toombs among the number, advocated a consti- 
tutional amendment validating the "Missouri Compromise" 
line, excluding negro slavery from the common territories 
north of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes north latitude (5), 
by which the Northwest would have been left for unrestricted 
Northern expansion and the Southwest for Southern expan- 
sion, to the real benefit of both sections and races. And the 
plea of the South in the "Peace Congress" of the States, 
which was assembled that winter at Virginia's call, was con- 
cession and conciliation. 

No fair-mniled man can read the diplomatic and official 
record of those proceedings, especially those centering about 
the Confederate commission to Washington, without con- 
cluding that the Lincoln administration deliberately and suc- 
cessfully blocked the South's earnest efforts at conciliation 
and did so in order that the South might be driven to some 
overt act, such as the bombardment of Fort Sumter, which 
would inflame the still reluctant North into supporting a 
program of invasion and conquest and the imposition upon 

[71 



free and sovereign States and peoples of the shackles of 
government from the top. 

4. Mr. Justice Campbell, of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, wrote to Mr. Seward, Lincoln's Secretary 
of State, under date of April 13, 1861 (6) : "I think no can- 
did man who will read over what T have written and con- 
sider for a moment what is going on at Sumter but will 
agree thai the equivocating conduct of the Lincoln .idmin- 
istration is the proximate cause of the great calamity." 

The Southern States in withdrawing from the old partner- 
ship of States had acted only after careful deliberation by 
the peoples of the several States, each State for itself, and 
under explicit directions from the people to their servants, 
the proper public officials of the respective States. The Lin- 
coln administration replied first by the maneuvers above 
noted relative to Fort Sumter, then by calling for troops to 
invade the South. (Several months later, when war was al- 
ready actually begun. Congress was assembled.) No sovereign 
conventions of the people were called in the North, as was 
done in the South (by a sort of popular referendum) to pass 
upon the immediate crisis precipitated upon the country, 
analogous to those conventions which acted upon the Fed- 
eral Constitution of 1789 and accepted it, each convention for 
its own particular State. The leaders of Lincoln's party,' 
having already taken the awful responsibility, in fomenting 
the "free-soil" and "anti-slavery" agitation, of flouting the 
solemn warnings of Washington and Jeflferson (7) against 
"geographical discriminations" — ;. e.. aggressive sectionalism 
— as inimical to continued union, now assumed the further 
responsibility of rebuffing the advances of the South in the 
Peace Congress and then actually inaugurating war by action 
of the executive department of the government alone, where- 
as Congress, under the Constitution (Article L, Section 8), 
is the war-making power. 

The triumph of the Confederate States would have been a 
notable triumph for government b}' the people and for peace- 
able adjustment of grave international or intersectional dis- 
putes. Negro slavery, for which South and North were 
alike responsible, eventually would have gone and with little 
or no bloodshed. The United States would have been no 
more destroyed than was the British Empire by the inde- 
pendence of the revolted colonies ; and in the one case, as in 

r ^ 1 



the other, the portion remaining under the old government 
would have been actually stronger from the true democratic 
standpoint by reason of the lesson learned of the vital neces- 
sity of protecting the rights of a minority section. Appo- 
mattox put back the hand of progress fully half a century 
on the dial plate of political liberty, and the self-governing 
rights of smaller States or nations (real minority protection) 
awaited its formal recognition by the allies in the war of 
1914. 

If the State, simple or confederated, is conceived of as 
the foundation of rights and its interests are regarded as 
paramount to those of the constituent units, be those units 
individuals or commonwealths, it is only a short step to the 
conclusion that that State is not bound by the moral prin- 
ciples which are binding upon individuals. 

5. The point to which such a State or nation will go in 
violating moral principles may depend entirely upon what 
the rulers at the moment in power regard as the self-interest 
of the State. What that self-interest is conceived at any 
time to be depends in turn upon the prevailing view of na- 
tional destiny. 

We know to-day what infinite sufifering resulted from the 
Northern invasion of the seceded States. We realize how 
utterly impossible it always is for the ruthless invader and 
conqueror to make adequate amends for unspeakable loss. 
As we view one tragic event that succeeded another — rape 
following robbery and murder accompanied by devastation 
and political slavery — we are forcibly reminded that all this 
is excusable only on the specious plea of self-interest and 
"necessity" or military need. 

6. Interstate comity and broad humanity would have been 
violated by the invasion and coercion of the peace-pleading 
Southern States even if there had been no express guaranty 
by treaty. Constitution, or other formal compact for the 
observance of the freedom and sovereignty of those com- 
monwealths. But there was such an express guaranty. At 
least three of the States — Virginia, New York, and Rhode 
Island — in ratifying the Federal Constitution formally re- 
served the right of secession or of "resumption" of the dele- 
gated powers. (8) Nor did the Constitution declare that 
the Union thereunder should be "perpetual," as had the old 
Articles of Confederation (in their title and also in Article 

[9] 



J3) regarding the old Union, from which "perpetual Union" 
each of the States ratifying the new Constitution of 1789 
thereupon seceded or withdrew. Moreover, a proposal to 
embody in the Constitution a power to coerce a recalcitrant 
State was opposed in the constitutional convention of 1787 
on the ground that this would mean war, and the proposal 
was voted down. (9) The late Charles Francis Adams, of 
Massachusetts, a veteran of the Northern armies of 1861-65, 
has remarked (10) that for the first forty or fifty years or 
so after the adoption of the Federal Constitution the ulti- 
mate right of secession, "in case of a final, unavoidable is- 
sue," was generally recognized in the North and the South 
alike. 

Now, among individuals it is, of course, elementary law 
and morals that a settled construction of a contract (let 
alone an express condition by some of the parties embodying 
that construction) at the time the contract is made cannot 
rightfully be changed thereafter when the changing interests 
of one or some of the parties invite such a change against 
the interests of others of the parties to such contract. And 
Mr. Pepper says that the same code of morals binds in- 
dividuals and nations alike. Again, in law and in morals a 
contract violated in a vital particular by one or more of the 
parties to it is no longer binding upon the other party or 
parties, (n) 

We have seen that the compact, or contract, of union be- 
tween the States in 1789 was entered into in. order "to 
establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, * * * pro- 
mote the general welfare." In i860, by a strictly sectionalist 
vote, an administration was elected which was pledged to 
keep the Southerners, with their negroes, out of the common 
territories won by the common blood and treasure of South 
and North alike; and many prominent supporters of this 
new, now victorious political party had openly sympathized 
with John Brown in his recent efforts to incite a servile in- 
surrection in the South (12), thus threatening deliberate and 
wholesale rapine and devastation. Surely for the South under 
such an administration and such a party the constitutional 
contract was violated in most vital and essential particulars 
and no longer made for justice or for the South'? domestic 
tranquillity or her general welfare. 

[10] 



In the face, then, of these plain, stubborn, indisputable 
facts of record, and in view of that rule of legal and moral 
conduct which is equally binding upon individuals and upon 
nations, there was no possible excuse for what was then per- 
petrated — the invasion, devastation, and conquest of the 
Southern States — except the self-interest of the invaders, real 
or imagined; "a process of natural evolution." Charles Fran- 
cis Adams calls it in his very interesting address to the Uni- 
versity of South Carolina (13), and this is only another way 
of saying "manifest destiny." 

7. The issue must not be obscured by insisting that in the 
course of the war of 1861-65 cruelties were practiced on both 
sides. It is inevitable that this should be so. But the things 
which individuals or even nations do under provocation and 
in violation of their own standards are not to be compared 
with the ontworkings of a ruthless system founded upon 
"manifest destiny"' and logically buttressed by "military 
necessity." Such in the last analysis is the difiference be- 
tween a centralized government from the top and decen- 
tralized government by the people under written constitu- 
tions or charters of government. When seeking for Im - 
torical comparisons from American annals to shame German 
barbarities in the war of 1914, Northern papers turned to 
Lee in Pennsylvania and Semnies on the sea (14) — not to 
Butler in New Orleans with his unspeakable Order No. 28; 
not to Sheridan with his torch in the Shenandoah Valley nor 
to Sherman with his torch in Atlanta and Columbia and his 
deliberate depopulation of Atlanta ; not to Halleck in his 
official suggestion that Charleston be razed and sown with 
salt (15) ; not even to the policy adopted by Lincoln's ad- 
ministration by which medicine itself was made contraband of 
war against the beleaguered South (16), thus condemning 
to wasting disease and lingering death not only countless sick 
or wounded soldiers, including Northern captives in Con- 
federate prisons, but also many women and little children 
among those "enemies" which Scripture connnands that we 
feed and minister unto in their distress. 

Such was the natural result of training in the most in- 
sidious ways the great people of a great section of country 
to conceive of a supposed sectional and national self-interest 
as of more concern than the faithful observance of weighty 

[H] 



contractual obligations and the solemn warnings of the Revo- 
lutionary and constitutionalist fathers. 

As remarked above, it is regrettable that such issues as 
these should be thrust upon us in the midst of the common 
struggle of South and North against a European foe. But 
when the situation is thus taken advantage of to draw an 
attempted parallel by which the invading hosts of the 'sixties 
are made to stand for the cause and underlying principles 
of our present allies, and the invaded South of the 'sixties is 
made to represent our ruthless enemy of to-day, we of the 
South must insist on being heard in a solemn appeal to tlic 
record. God helping us, we can do no other. 



(1) As Quoted in A. H. Stephens'.? "History of tlie United 
States," page 301. 

(2) See tlie writer's pamplilet, '"Was It Anti-Slavery?" (La- 
tham, S. C. v.. Prize Essay, 1916) and Ewing's "Legal and 
Historical Status of the Dred Scott Decision." chapter 4. 

(3) Volume I., "Messages and Papers of the Confederacy," 
page 71. 

(4) Ibid., S2. 

(5) Stephens, 5(5 3. 

(6) Volume 1., "Messages and Paper.s." 90. 

(7) AVashington's Farewell Address; "The Writings of Tliomas 
Jefferson" (1S29), Volume IV., 323-4. 

(8) Volume I.. "Elliot's Debates," 327-9, 334-5. 

(9) Volume V., "Elliot's Debates," 127-8, 140. 

(10) Centennial Address on Robert E. Lee, 1907, pamphlet, 
page 10. 

fll) Volume in.. American and Englisli Encyclopedia of Law, 
first edition, 90S, et seq. 

(12) Stephens, 5.56; Pollard's "The Lost Cause," 73, 74. 

(13) Page 13 of the address as published (1913) in pamphlet 
form and entitled " 'Tis Sixty Years Since." 

(14) The newspaper clippings not at present available. (As 
I recall it, the New York World and a Chicago daily are the 
papers in question. L. T. E.) 

(15) "Official Records of the War." Series 1. Volume XV., 426 ; 
ibid.. Volume XLIII., Part I.. 917 ; ibid.. Volume XLIV., 8 ; ibid., 
56; ibid.. Volume XXXIX.. Part II., 414; ibid., 418; ijiter ah, 
Volume v., "Confederate Military History,' 365-6 (burning of 
Columbia) ; "Official Records," Series 1, Volume XLIV., 741. 

(16) Volume IV., "Congressional Record," 347; Volume I., 
"Confederate Militarj'- History," 487, 495-6 : Confederate Veteran, 
July, 1915, pages 302-3. 

[12] 



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